cross post - i need help friends

it has been over a year since my surgery and now i am grazing - eating - whatever you eant to call it i am like a drugy seeing for drugs please help me i need somthing? encouragement? lecture? pep talk? not sure what? i have been grazing and i cant seem to stop! craving! grazing! kf

One thing to do is look at your before picture and how far you have come  You surely do not want to go back.  You can beat this!  You are a beautiful young woman who has the tenacity that it takes to stare a challenge down and win.  How do I know that? Because you have done it once... you can surely do it again!  I know you can. I'm right there with you sis, and I am fighting to maintain and make sure that I don't let it take the best of me.  I have upped my protein and downed the calories/carbs.  I think that is helping to  make me feel full, and I've upped the liquid intake....its hard those first few days!  But let's do it!

thanks for responding i am going to up my protien and see if that helps i AM going to stare this thing down! kf

Hello,   Okay - you're grazing. What's your weight doing? Are you maintaining or gaining? I went through about 2 months of what seemed like non-stop eating, but the weight was maintaining - so obviously I was balancing it somehow. Then about 3 weeks ago I all of a sudden jumped up 7 lbs, putting me 2 lbs over my self-set max. I put myself back on strict post-op - 3 meals a day/75% protein/ and a HUGE amount of water - I had to to keep from eating!. In 5 days I lost 6 lbs. It's great that our tool will work whenever we go back to basics. Take it one day at a time - stop beating yourself up, and go back to basics for awhile. If nothing else, it will encourage you to see that you can do it. At almost 3 years post-op and still at goal, I've learned that I will NEVER follow program every day, that it's okay not to, but to not let myself ever gain more than 5 lbs before towing the line. Also, one the best pieces of news my surgeon gave me was that normal weight people's weight flucuates w/i a 5 lb window naturally. They just let their clothes/scale tell them when to cut back for a couple of days/week or up the exercise to maintain. "Maintain" does not mean staying at a set number. The next time you want to reach for a bite - drink your water!

dawn thanks for taking time to respond i know what you mean about the "set" limit i have mine too even though i would "idealy" like to lose a little more i still have my "limit" and wont go over it water water water water water water water water water water water water water water water kf

Have you seen your surgeon and NUT for your one year follow up? Perhaps you are needing to eat more at your meals/snacks and thats why you have started grazing? I would food log for 1-2 weeks and see where you are falling nutritionally... also by food logging that may 'deter' you from grazing since you have to hold yourself accountable and log it into your daily eating - it will also allow you to see how that grazing is adding up calorie/fat/carb/protein wise.  I hit a point where I found I was eating more and feeling like I needed to eat more - I went and had a metabolism test and found for my body I was undereating approx 400-800 calories a day (depending on if I wanted to be losing weight or maintaining)... thats a whole lotta calories... once I upped what I was eating and added an additional snack I found my energy levels were more consistant and I felt a lot better.  Basically you have to figure out if your 'grazing' is a phsyical response or are you mentally just wanting to eat and giving into the old head hunger.

thanks for stimulating my thoughts i have been thinking it was "anxiety" related -  but, maybe i do need to eat more at meal/snack times i am going to log and see if that helps kf